By Jaime Ferris

People who want to watch the final round of the men’s hockey competition at the Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver will have to shell out $775 per ticket and sit in a chilly arena. Most of us will settle for watching the Olympics from the warmth of our own living rooms, but for those who want live sports and authentic winter chill, why not try the Institute for American Indian Studies (IAIS) Winter Games, to be held Feb. 13 from 1 to 3 p.m. at its outdoor Algonkian village in Washington.

What type of games did early Native Americans play in the winter?

“There were contests of skill and personal challenge, as well as games of chance,” said IAIS assistant director Lisa Piastuch Temmen. “Teaching people how to cooperate, games and sporting events were for the young and young at heart.”

In keeping with that tradition, IAIS educators have organized a fun-filled afternoon during which participants can learn about and play traditional games, such as snow snake, shinny and archery. For those chilled by the weather or in search of a break from the afternoon’s activities, the day will conclude with a campfire in the Algonkian village, hot chocolate and roasting marshmallows.

“We have been hosting winter walks and survival skills programs at the museum this winter and they have done very well,” Ms. Temmen said. “The survivor skills program was so successful, we had to add another session to accommodate 25 more people. Since games are a popular draw for school groups that visit, we hope the Winter Games will be as well received.”

According to James and Joseph Bruchac’s book, “Native American Games and Stories,” which was featured in an IAIS exhibition, “For Native Americans, playing games of skill and chance was an integral part of everyday life. Games and toys brought people of all ages together and taught them how to cooperate, as well as strengthened the mind, body and spirit.”

“The idea of team sports appears to be more common among Native American peoples than anywhere else in the world,” the Bruchacs wrote. “There were spectator sports in Europe and Asia before contact with North American peoples; these games and sports were primarily individual contests, such as races on foot, on horseback, or on chariots, as well as wrestling, archery and boxing. Ball games that involved two teams, such as lacrosse and shinny [hockey] did not evolve in Europe prior to the 15th century.”

Native Americans, Ms. Temmen said, used items available to them in nature, such as logs, seeds, fruit pits, stones, bones and shells in games. In the popular sport snow snake, for instance, a smooth, five- to nine-foot maple branch was required. The object of the game was to throw the snow snake (the branch) the longest distance in the shortest time along a prepared track. The track was usually made in the snow with a log that was pressed into and pulled through the snow, to which water was added to make the track slippery.

Some of the outdoor games to look forward to at the IAIS include archery, tug of war, snow snake, eagle eye, and shinny, a primitive version of hockey. Eagle eye was a strategic hide-and-seek game, teaching young hunters how to camouflage themselves in their surroundings.

Ring-and-pin is another game slated for the IAIS Winter Games. It is a miniature version of the hoop-and-pole game in which players throw a spear or shoot an arrow through a hoop or ring that was meant to resemble a spider web. Hoop-and-pole was typically played by men and, sometimes boys, while ring-and-pin was played by women and children.

Other traditional winter games included foot races, ring tosses, throwing stones at targets, sliding stones on ice, spinning tops on winter ice and cat’s cradle.

“Winter was also a time for repairing and making tools and clothes, and preparing for spring,” Ms. Temmen noted. “The harvest was done, and the earth was frozen, so there was not much to do. Stories were also a traditional activity during the winter months.”

Ms. Temmen said the afternoon’s focus will be on outdoor activities, but there will be some indoor events that will focus on games like hubbub, a dice game of chance, and the moccasin game. The latter involved hiding tokens or some other object under a moccasin in full sight of one’s opponent, who then had to guess which moccasin concealed the item in question. It wasn’t that easy, however. There were many pretenses of hiding and removing the item so that opponents found it difficult to guess where the token was hidden.

“It should be a really fun afternoon,” Ms. Temmen said last Friday about the upcoming IAIS Winter Games. “I just hope it’s a little warmer out than it [was last] weekend, or we’ll have a lot of people around the campfire.”

Winter Games will be held in the Algonkian village Feb. 13 from 1 to 3 p.m. at the Institute for American Indian Studies, located at 38 Curtis Road in Washington. Adults are $10; children are $8. Reservations are requested by calling 860-868-0518, or by visiting www.birdstone.org.